What if the Big East had never admitted Notre Dame as a member in all sports except Football in 1995?

Would Villanova be the 9th Big East school for football much in the same way that the Sun Belt waited for Western Kentucky?

No, Big East Football offered Villanova football membership - no strings attached. Villanova turned them down after doing an extensive study of the matter. This offer came after Notre Dame was a member. Regardless, the Big East's non-football schools - which includes Notre Dame - have no roll in decisions by the football schools.

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Could Temple have stayed for Football, or possibly have even landed an all-sports membership?

No. Temple was a disaster as an associate member for football in the Big East. They were a laughing stock & an embarassment to the league. After being given performance standards to meet, they failed to measure up, which is why their associate membership was not renewed. BTW, they are still one of the nation's worst I-A football programs - something that the Big East does not need in any way.

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Would the Big East use three divisions for basketball, i.e.:
West - Louisville, Marquette, DePaul, Cincinnati, South Florida
Central - Syracuse, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Nova, Georgetown
East - UConn, Rutgers, Seton Hall, Providence, St. John's

The Big East has made it clear that it is no longer interested in divisional alignments. The new members did not join for the purpose of being relegated back into a CUSA division. Nothing like this will happen in the foreseeable future. In the distant future? Who knows?

PS - You left out Notre Dame.

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Would Memphis, Navy, Army, Central Florida, TCU, or East Carolina be in the Big East?

Good God, I hope not. :o

The commissioner of the Big East publicly stated this fall that they are not seeking candidates for expansion. He did not rule out the possibility of adding another member in the future but said that such a candidate would have to approach the league & it would have to be a program that improved the league. I do not see such improvement being offered by any of the candidates listed here.

What if the Big East had never admitted Notre Dame as a member in all sports except Football in 1995?

Would Villanova be the 9th Big East school for football much in the same way that the Sun Belt waited for Western Kentucky?

Could Temple have stayed for Football, or possibly have even landed an all-sports membership?

Would the Big East use three divisions for basketball, i.e.:
West - Louisville, Marquette, DePaul, Cincinnati, South Florida
Central - Syracuse, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Nova, Georgetown
East - UConn, Rutgers, Seton Hall, Providence, St. John's

Would Memphis, Navy, Army, Central Florida, TCU, or East Carolina be in the Big East?

That time in the BE was very interesting because it was the time that WVu and RU were admitted to the BE for all sports while Temple and VT had to keep their sports in the A10 while still playing BE FB (all four schools were admitted for FB in 1991 or so).

If VU had a president that was interested in FB they would already be in the BE. I doubt they ever will be.

If ND wasn't admitted in the BE in 1995 (or ever) then I believe that the BE would have eventually split - maybe even prior to a raid from the ACC.

If ND wasn't admitted in the BE in 1995 (or ever) then I believe that the BE would have eventually split - maybe even prior to a raid from the ACC.

Interesting theory.

How did Notre Dame prevent the BE football schools from splitting at any time? Including today? I'm confused. ???

If the football schools had wanted to go off on their own, I don't see how anyone could possibly have prevented it. They would simply have paid their exit fees & left. They would then have been free to start a new conference.

If ND wasn't admitted in the BE in 1995 (or ever) then I believe that the BE would have eventually split - maybe even prior to a raid from the ACC.

Interesting theory.

How did Notre Dame prevent the BE football schools from splitting at any time? Including today? I'm confused. ???

If the football schools had wanted to go off on their own, I don't see how anyone could possibly have prevented it. They would simply have paid their exit fees & left. They would then have been free to start a new conference.

Friar,

You are correct in a sense that they could have paid the exit fees and left. I should have qualified my statement. The BE FB-6 in 2003 voted to split 6-0 in July 2003. Then, suddendly, in October 2003 you noticed that the BE wanted to stay together. It was 'rumored' that ND sided with the BB schools yielding a 6-6 vote as whether to split or not. We'll never know for sure though.

ND - as a marketing brand - would be valuable to the BE. Therefore, without ND, maybe there would be more of a push to split and go their separate ways because now you have one less BIG marketing chip - the 800 lb gorilla that is in the room so to speak - that is in the BE BB.

There was an interesting article last summer with an interview of the consultant who worked with the football schools in the summer of '03. According to him, the football schools came into the meeting ready to split. However, he asked them to evaluate their assets. After they completed this assessment, they decided that they had more to gain by staying with the non-football schools than they did by splitting. ND was not in the room for this meeting & had nothing to do with the decision.

They decided to try the 16-team format but left themselves an out with the agreement that they could split without financial penalty after 5 years.

The article was a real eye opener. I'll see if I can find the link for you.

Last edited by friarfan on Mon Dec 04, 2006 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Please do because A LOT of people (including myself) are going by the assumption that the BE FB schools did NOT split because ND was essentially the deciding factor - ie 6 BE FB schools, 5 non 1A FB schools, and 1A FB independent (ND) - meant the loss of two majore sources of revenue including BB credits (around $40 million) and the BE name for BCS bid and bowl contracts. Lesser interests includes and autobid for NCAA tourney purposes in BB and other sports.

Friar, you claim you support a split and selectively split hairs backed by ridiculous statements such as only Rutgers has a football market and Notre Dame is not faith based. Near anybody can tactically invert an argument. L'ville's point was not about gymnastics--there is a difference between prime sports, minor sports, random analogies with the point in jest, and not sponsoring sports. Villanova & G'town don't sponsor 1A football, Notre Dame does. Tigershacktwo was much better at Santa Maria trolling. Where did all the presenters go......... A bit late or keep em from returning?

Please do because A LOT of people (including myself) are going by the assumption that the BE FB schools did NOT split because ND was essentially the deciding factor - ie 6 BE FB schools, 5 non 1A FB schools, and 1A FB independent (ND) - meant the loss of two majore sources of revenue including BB credits (around $40 million) and the BE name for BCS bid and bowl contracts. Lesser interests includes and autobid for NCAA tourney purposes in BB and other sports.

Okay. I have found the article & it was more recent than I had recalled - New York Times, November 2. Unfortunately, New York Times archives are only available as a pay site & can't be linked. I will post it as soon as I can get to the local library & get a copy. Anyone who is interested in doing the same, here's the title:

"Big East Gets Big Bounce from Football", by Pete Thamel

Regarding the voting scenario, this refers to the NCAA rules regarding continuance & dissolution of conferences. The only options for conference members interested in realigning a conference is to leave; they can't expel fellow conference members. A conference must have 6 continuing members to remain a conference. If the football members could have convinced Notre Dame to jon them, that would have left only 5 non-football members. By NCAA rule, the conference would have been formally dissolved, each school would have kept its NCAA basketball credits, & the Big East name would have been up for grabs. No one would have been entitled to an automatic bid because all members would have been starting from scratch either as independents, as members of a new conference, or as members of some existing conference that they might have joined. In the case of a new conference, they would have been required to required to fulfill the NCAA waiting period before they could qualify for an automatic bid. The only way that anyone could have kept an auto bid was for the Big East or a 6+ team remnant of it to have remained intact.

Notre Dame was a swing vote only in the eyes of those who those who held out hope at the time that ND would join the football members - an unrealistic hope as it turns out. But how does that make ND any more responsible for the outcome than any of the other 5 members who didn't want to leave? Why not blame Villanova or Georgetown who could have decided to upgrade their football programs to I-A & join the football schools? Why not St. John's who could have asked to join as a non-football program & bring the huge NYC market? The fact is that all members based their decisions on their own self-interest. When all was said & done, there were 6 who wanted to leave & 6 who wanted to remain as the Big East. ND had never been a football member & was under no obligation to join the others.

Once the 6 non-football members (including ND, a BE non-footballer) decided to stay put, then the conference met NCAA requirements to continue as a conference, keep its name, keep all the bb credits, & keep the automatic bid. This means that the football schools had to decide if they wanted to leave these things behind. They would also have faced exit payments.

However, this was not the monstrous decision that it was made out to be. It was no different a decision than the one that was faced by Miami, Virginia Tech, & BC when they defected to the ACC; or the CUSA schools when they defected their conference & joined the Big East; or Arkansas when it left the Southwest Conference to join the SEC. The list goes on. Schools who see a brighter future somewhere else take the hit & move on. So, why weren't the football schools willing to do this?

I think that as much as anything else what held the football schools back was the uncertain future ot their BCS bid. They didn't want to leave the Big East to become CUSA-East. The didn't get assurances about their BCS bid until 2004 - 6 months after their summer of pain when these decisions were being made. They knew that they had big time basketball in the Big East with a big time tournament at Madison Square Garden. They knew they would have a big time basketball contract regardless of the future of football. They weren't willing to break this up for what might prove to be an unsuccessful flyer on football. They were also operating in crisis mode under duress. I don't think they were willing to make snnap judgments about their long term future. The new 16-team Big East bought them time, which is what they needed to sort things out.

The bottom line is that Notre Dame was never in a position to "save" the Big East because the football schools were never interested in that proposition. It was the football schools who wanted to destroy the Big East as we had known it & replace it with something else. Nothing wrong with that, but it's important to be clear about it. They were looking to destroy something & ND was looking to preserve something. Schools like West Virginia & Rutgers were attempting to hijack something that had been built by schools like Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, & Gerogetown. How are these football schools made to seem the victims?

Last edited by friarfan on Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Okay. I have found the article & it was more recent than I had recalled - New York Times, November 2. Unfortunately, New York Times archives are only available as a pay site & can't be linked. I will post it as soon as I can get to the local library & get a copy. Anyone who is interested in doing the same, here's the title:

"Big East Gets Big Bounce from Football", by Pete Thamel

Thanks Gunner. I don't have access to the NYTimes old articles as I currently live overseas. If you don't want to post the article on the website, let me know and if possible you can email it to me.

.....are going by the assumption that the BE FB schools did NOT split because ND was essentially the deciding factor - ie 6 BE FB schools, 5 non 1A FB schools, and 1A FB independent (ND) - meant the loss of two majore sources of revenue including BB credits (around $40 million) and the BE name for BCS bid and bowl contracts. Lesser interests includes and autobid for NCAA tourney purposes in BB and other sports.

Regarding the voting scenario, this refers to the NCAA rules regarding continuance & dissolution of conferences. The only options for conference members interested in realigning a conference is to leave; they can't expel fellow conference members. A conference must have 6 continuing members to remain a conference. If the football members could have convinced Notre Dame to jon them, that would have left only 5 non-football members. By NCAA rule, the conference would have been formally dissolved, each school would have kept its NCAA basketball credits, & the Big East name would have been up for grabs. No one would have been entitled to an automatic bid because all members would have been starting from scratch either as independents, as members of a new conference, or as members of some existing conference that they might have joined. In the case of a new conference, they would have been required to required to fulfill the NCAA waiting period before they could qualify for an automatic bid. The only way that anyone could have kept an auto bid was for the Big East or a 6+ team remnant of it to have remained intact.

I was under the impression that if the BE FB6 split (Pitt, SU, WVu, RU, UConn, and BC) that they would have kept the BE name, credits, etc. Also, that something would have been worked out with the 'BB' schools.

Since the FB schools didn't have the votes, then they would have to officially dissolve from the conference and then lose what I had mentioned in the previous post.

However, you can actually eject a member from a conference but I do not know what the voting rules for that are but I would assume it is more than just a simple majority.

Another point is that the new conference could petition the NCAA to waive the 'auto-bid' time. It is not known for sure whether it would have been waived becuase I remember that the MWC or another conference had problems with the NCAA about such a situation (my memory is fuzzy on the conference)???

Quote:

Notre Dame was a swing vote only in the eyes of those who those who held out hope at the time that ND would join the football members - an unrealistic hope as it turns out. But how does that make ND any more responsible for the outcome than any of the other 5 members who didn't want to leave? Why not blame Villanova or Georgetown who could have decided to upgrade their football programs to I-A & join the football schools? Why not St. John's who could have asked to join as a non-football program & bring the huge NYC market? The fact is that all members based their decisions on their own self-interest. When all was said & done, there were 6 who wanted to leave & 6 who wanted to remain as the Big East. ND had never been a football member & was under no obligation to join the others.

Once the 6 non-football members (including ND, a BE non-footballer) decided to stay put, then the conference met NCAA requirements to continue as a conference, keep its name, keep all the bb credits, & keep the automatic bid. This means that the football schools had to decide if they wanted to leave these things behind. They would also have faced exit payments.

However, this was not the monstrous decision that it was made out to be. It was no different a decision than the one that was faced by Miami, Virginia Tech, & BC when they defected to the ACC; or the CUSA schools when they defected their conference & joined the Big East; or Arkansas when it left the Southwest Conference to join the SEC. The list goes on. Schools who see a brighter future somewhere else take the hit & move on. So, why weren't the football schools willing to do this?

I think that as much as anything else what held the football schools back was the uncertain future ot their BCS bid. They didn't want to leave the Big East to become CUSA-East. The didn't get assurances about their BCS bid until 2004 - 6 months after their summer of pain when these decisions were being made. They knew that they had big time basketball in the Big East with a big time tournament at Madison Square Garden. They knew they would have a big time basketball contract regardless of the future of football. They weren't willing to break this up for what might prove to be an unsuccessful flyer on football. They were also operating in crisis mode under duress. I don't think they were willing to make snnap judgments about their long term future. The new 16-team Big East bought them time, which is what they needed to sort things out.

The bottom line is that Notre Dame was never in a position to "save" the Big East because the football schools were never interested in that proposition. It was the football schools who wanted to destroy the Big East as we had known it & replace it with something else. Nothing wrong with that, but it's important to be clear about it. They were looking to destroy something & ND was looking to preserve something. Schools like West Virginia & Rutgers were attempting to hijack something that had been built by schools like Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, & Gerogetown. How are these football schools made to seem the victims?

I should have been more clear in that 'deciding vote' meaning that it was not 100% clear which direction ND wanted the conference to go which is why I (and others) say that ND was the deciding factor. You are correct to point out that any of the non-1A FB schools could also be deemed as a deciding vote but it was assumed that they aligned themselves with the other non-1A FB schools.

Just so I am clear - I am certainly one of those people who think ND should do what they want to do - in that they shouldn't join a conference if they don't want to. I really don't ahve a problem with it as my school (Pitt) was an indy in FB for a LONG time but sought conference membership for a variety of reasons.

I am not trying to portray the FB schools as the 'victims' - only to show that at the time of the aCC raid in 2003 that the FB schools thought it would be in their best interests to finally forge their own destiny. They obviously didn't think the financial penalties were worth it at the time (and I agree with them). Certainly, it will be intersting to see what happens in 2010 (the earliest they can split) - although others think the earliest would realistically be 2012 - unless a BCS school wants to join.

Another scenerio would ahve been what would the BE and CUSA looked today if thet ACC went ahead and added SU, BC, and Miami in June 2003- but that is for another topic.

Last edited by panthersc97 on Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have posted the NY Times article on this board & have placed it in the "Conference Realignment & Expansion News" section for easier access & for availability to others who haven't read this thread. here is the link:

Regarding the voting scenario, this refers to the NCAA rules regarding continuance & dissolution of conferences. The only options for conference members interested in realigning a conference is to leave; they can't expel fellow conference members. A conference must have 6 continuing members to remain a conference. If the football members could have convinced Notre Dame to jon them, that would have left only 5 non-football members. By NCAA rule, the conference would have been formally dissolved, each school would have kept its NCAA basketball credits, & the Big East name would have been up for grabs. No one would have been entitled to an automatic bid because all members would have been starting from scratch either as independents, as members of a new conference, or as members of some existing conference that they might have joined. In the case of a new conference, they would have been required to required to fulfill the NCAA waiting period before they could qualify for an automatic bid. The only way that anyone could have kept an auto bid was for the Big East or a 6+ team remnant of it to have remained intact.

I was under the impression that if the BE FB6 split (Pitt, SU, WVu, RU, UConn, and BC) that they would have kept the BE name, credits, etc. Also, that something would have been worked out with the 'BB' schools.

Nope. Technically it wouldn't have been a split. somebody would have been leaving & it would have been the football schools. Everything thet the conference owned would have stayed behind. I suppose that they could have initiated negotiations for the name of the non-football schools were willing, but the latter would not have been required to do that.

[quote}Since the FB schools didn't have the votes, then they would have to officially dissolve from the conference and then lose what I had mentioned in the previous post.[/quote]

No. Best case scenario for the football schools would have been to dissolve the conference & that would have been possibly only if they did have the votes. Since the football schools would have been the ones leaving, the conference would only have been dissolved if there weren't enough members left behind to keep the conference going. The magic number for that was 6, i.e. the 5 non-football schools + Notre Dame.

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However, you can actually eject a member from a conference but I do not know what the voting rules for that are but I would assume it is more than just a simple majority.

Each conference has its own rules about this in its by-laws. In some cases, a member cannot be ejected. In most cases it's under highly restrictive & very limited circumstances. It can't be done frivolously. There's no way that the football schools could have gotten away with ejecting 5 or 6 members. I doubt that they would have had cause to expel even one.

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Another point is that the new conference could petition the NCAA to waive the 'auto-bid' time. It is not known for sure whether it would have been waived becuase I remember that the MWC or another conference had problems with the NCAA about such a situation (my memory is fuzzy on the conference)???

Yes, they could have. However, it is very unlikely that the NCAA would have granted it once BC left. They only had 5 members who had previously competed together. The difference with the MWC is that when the WAC split, the new MWC had 8 members who had recently been competing against each other & at least 6 of them had been competing together for many, many years - well above the minimum requirement. Six is the magic number.

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Notre Dame was a swing vote only in the eyes of those who those who held out hope at the time that ND would join the football members - an unrealistic hope as it turns out. But how does that make ND any more responsible for the outcome than any of the other 5 members who didn't want to leave? Why not blame Villanova or Georgetown who could have decided to upgrade their football programs to I-A & join the football schools? Why not St. John's who could have asked to join as a non-football program & bring the huge NYC market? The fact is that all members based their decisions on their own self-interest. When all was said & done, there were 6 who wanted to leave & 6 who wanted to remain as the Big East. ND had never been a football member & was under no obligation to join the others.

Once the 6 non-football members (including ND, a BE non-footballer) decided to stay put, then the conference met NCAA requirements to continue as a conference, keep its name, keep all the bb credits, & keep the automatic bid. This means that the football schools had to decide if they wanted to leave these things behind. They would also have faced exit payments.

However, this was not the monstrous decision that it was made out to be. It was no different a decision than the one that was faced by Miami, Virginia Tech, & BC when they defected to the ACC; or the CUSA schools when they defected their conference & joined the Big East; or Arkansas when it left the Southwest Conference to join the SEC. The list goes on. Schools who see a brighter future somewhere else take the hit & move on. So, why weren't the football schools willing to do this?

I think that as much as anything else what held the football schools back was the uncertain future ot their BCS bid. They didn't want to leave the Big East to become CUSA-East. The didn't get assurances about their BCS bid until 2004 - 6 months after their summer of pain when these decisions were being made. They knew that they had big time basketball in the Big East with a big time tournament at Madison Square Garden. They knew they would have a big time basketball contract regardless of the future of football. They weren't willing to break this up for what might prove to be an unsuccessful flyer on football. They were also operating in crisis mode under duress. I don't think they were willing to make snnap judgments about their long term future. The new 16-team Big East bought them time, which is what they needed to sort things out.

The bottom line is that Notre Dame was never in a position to "save" the Big East because the football schools were never interested in that proposition. It was the football schools who wanted to destroy the Big East as we had known it & replace it with something else. Nothing wrong with that, but it's important to be clear about it. They were looking to destroy something & ND was looking to preserve something. Schools like West Virginia & Rutgers were attempting to hijack something that had been built by schools like Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, & Gerogetown. How are these football schools made to seem the victims?

Quote:

I should have been more clear in that 'deciding vote' meaning that it was not 100% clear which direction ND wanted the conference to go which is why I (and others) say that ND was the deciding factor. You are correct to point out that any of the non-1A FB schools could also be deemed as a deciding vote but it was assumed that they aligned themselves with the other non-1A FB schools.

Just so I am clear - I am certainly one of those people who think ND should do what they want to do - in that they shouldn't join a conference if they don't want to. I really don't ahve a problem with it as my school (Pitt) was an indy in FB for a LONG time but sought conference membership for a variety of reasons.

I am not trying to portray the FB schools as the 'victims' - only to show that at the time of the aCC raid in 2003 that the FB schools thought it would be in their best interests to finally forge their own destiny. They obviously didn't think the financial penalties were worth it at the time (and I agree with them). Certainly, it will be intersting to see what happens in 2010 (the earliest they can split) - although others think the earliest would realistically be 2012 - unless a BCS school wants to join.

Another scenerio would ahve been what would the BE and CUSA looked today if thet ACC went ahead and added SU, BC, and Miami in June 2003- but that is for another topic.

Panther97, sorry about the Big East football schools as victims comment. I got carried away. It certainly wasn't directed at anything you said & I didn't mean to imply that you thought they were..

Last edited by friarfan on Wed Dec 06, 2006 9:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

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